As Casa Gialla is in southern Europe, it is an excellent location for a hot summer holiday. Although it appears global warming is more often making this a problematic issue than before.
Since purchasing the property, we have experienced summers with weeks of unbroken sunshine, but we have just as often experienced summers of changeable weather, and days of torrential rain.
However during the summer the temperatures here are generally higher than in the UK. Late 20s’c is normal, rising to mid 30’c. We have on occasions experienced higher too, which was most uncomfortable, and caused one of our guests to get sunburnt in bed through an open window one morning.
We are also atop a mountain, so we experience fresher, cooler weather than lower down the mountain, we are generally 3’c lower than in Castelnuovo di Garfagnana and more than in southern Tuscany, where the summer temperatures may become unbearable.
We have seen forest fires from a distance, but luckily were not in Italy, when a fire came to within several hundred yards of our house.
Spring and Autumn are often rainy. Spring 2023, was apparently particularly wet. We always remember May 2016, when we experienced days of torrential rain whilst building the new solar panel frame.
Traditionally in winter this area is cold with several feet of snow, infact, the first viewing of the property was during February snow, and there is a small ski resort 3 miles away (Vianova).
However again, global warming has affected this, and some years there is almost no snow, but winter 2020/21 was particularly severe, and there was a good 3 feet of snow on our balcony.
It appears to me, that we usually experience the same weather as that in the Apuane Alpi (which comes from the direction of Dead Man’s Mountain), rather than that from the Appenines, where we often see thunderstorms in the distance.
Whatever the weather, it appears to often change in an instant, with a hot sunny morning of unbroken blue skies, turning to torrential thunderstorms by the afternoon, and back again. We have experienced some of the loudest and most dramatic thunderstorms here.
The wind can blow up from nowhere, so it is always advisable to pin back windows, and tidy loose articles away before going out.
On one particularly memorable night, we had laid out the pool cover to close up the pool. During the night, there was an almighty storm. The cover was wrapped into the wood pile and hazelnut tree, and the patio chairs and table had been swept across the lawn.
On an earlier occasion, we saw a massive storm blowing in, we had to race and fight to close shutters and windows, and were pelted by inch across hailstones, which piled up to more than six inches.
Angela 2023